How the Columbia Shuttle Disaster Changed Spacecraft Safety Forever

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Ten years after the devastating Columbia space shuttle accident
that took the lives of seven astronauts, NASA is building a new
spacecraft that will take humans farther into space than ever
before, and will incorporate the safety lessons learned from the
disaster that befell the agency Feb. 1, 2003.

That day, the shuttle
Columbia was returning from a 16-day trip to space devoted to
science research. But what began as a routine re-entry through
Earth's atmosphere ended disastrously as the orbiter
disintegrated about 200,000 feet (61 kilometers) over Texas.

Later analysis found that Columbia was doomed during its launch,
when a small bit of foam insulation broke off the shuttle's
external fuel tank and tore a hole in the orbiter's wing. That
hole prevented Columbia from withstanding the scorching heat of
re-entry.

All of the lessons the agency learned were incorporated into
every subsequent flight NASA flew, and are now being used to
inform the design of its next-generation
spaceship, Orion. That vehicle is slated to carry people to
asteroids, the moon and Mars sometime in the mid-2020s.

"We're hoping nothing ever goes wrong, but if it does, we've
taken every possible step to keep the crew safe and give them
every possible fighting chance they can have," said Dustin
Gohmert, NASA crew survival engineering team lead, at Johnson
Space Center in Houston. "It's especially important to us that
were here during the Columbia accident, because they were our
friends, too."

The Columbia investigation exposed a number of flaws in the
design of the shuttle's crew cabin, including its seats,
seatbelts, spacesuits and life support system. Each of these has
been redesigned for Orion.

"The seats were one of the weaker links during the Columbia
accident," Gohmert told SPACE.com. "We wanted to make these
seats formfitting so they had a true fit to the body's shape."

NASA looked to the formfitting seats used in professional race
vcars, which provide even support to every part of the body,
offering extreme cushioning and shock absorption during a crash.
Orion designers even fine-tuned the vibration frequency of the
seats to have different resonances than the internal organs of a
human body.

The engineers also redesigned the seatbelts, which were another
issue during Columbia's flight. Here, they took inspiration from
the belts on children's car seats, which are adjustable to fit a
wide range of body sizes.

"We wanted an exact fit for every single person who could fit in
the vehicle, from females down to 4'10" and males up to 6'4","
Gohmert said. "It was quite a challenge."

Suiting up

The astronaut spacesuits were also completely redesigned for
Orion. The Columbia investigation board found that the
crewmembers didn't have time to configure their suits to protect
against depressurization, which occurred rapidly. In fact, some
of the astronauts were not wearing their safety gloves, and
one didn't even have a helmet on, because of how quickly the
accident took place. [ Columbia
Shuttle Disaster Explained (Infographic) ]

"In the case of Orion, the suits will instantaneously, and
without any action of the crew, inflate and protect from the loss
of pressure," Gohmert said.

The capsule life support system was also upgraded to provide a
constant flow of oxygen to the crew, even with their helmet
visors up and locked, which wasn't possible in the shuttle.

Each of these changes addresses flaws exposed by
the Columbia
shuttle disaster. Yet Gohmert said none of these upgrades
alone would have made a difference during the disaster.

"I caution against saying that any one thing we've corrected
would have protected against the outcome," he said. "However, we
examined all the lethal events that occurred in Columbia and
addressed each of them in the Orion. We're doing a whole lot of
things to make it safer, and everything we've learned from the
shuttle accidents, from Russian space accidents, automobile
accidents — we've taken lessons from all of them and tried to
incorporate them into Orion."

Perhaps the largest change from shuttle to Orion is the shift
from a winged space plane design to the cone-shaped capsule,
which sits atop the rocket rather than next to it.

"When we went to the capsule, we went from a side-mounted
spacecraft to a forward-mounted one," said Julie Kramer White,
Orion chief engineer. "Therefore, it's not exposed to debris
environments, which was obviously a huge issue for Columbia."

This configuration also allows the crew compartment of the
capsule to be ejected from the top of the rocket stack in the
case of an emergency on the launch pad or during liftoff. Such an
escape would not have been possible for the crew cabin of the
space shuttle.

Of course, the shuttle had capabilities that no capsule has —
namely, the ability to haul large, heavy cargos, such as the
building blocks of the International
Space Station, inside its cargo bay, White pointed out.

"The reaction has been very positive around all of NASA in terms
of giving us the capacity to make these safety improvements," he
said. "Previously, it was difficult to implement some of the
safety features as we'd hoped. Now it really is on the forefront
of everyone's mind."